Category Archives: Palestine

East Ghouta trench warfare. Good Lord that fighting looks brutal. Some truly vicious close-range trench warfare can be seen in this video. This what war looks like – the real thing. I will say that SAA and allied Palestinian, government and Arab Nationalist militias have very high morale from all the footage I have seen. It’s amazing as I am sure they are taking serious casualties. I saw a video today of a Syrian village of ~400 in 2011. 13% of its men were military age, and seven years later, almost all of them are dead, fighting for the government. Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that the government forces are not taking serious casualties.

There is so much I could say about this operation. Let us just say that everything you are hearing in the US and Western media is completely biased and a lot of it is flat out lies. The civilians in the area largely support the Syrian Army and oppose the Al Qaeda-type rebels.

The rebels have been using East Ghouta for years as a base to shell Damascus. Damascus gets shelled almost every day for years now by these character. The mortars are usually just aimed at the city but in recent months a number have targeted the Russian Embassy and meeting between various Russians, military and aid organizations, in the area. It is thought that the rebels do not have the ability to target Russians with this accuracy. What is going on here is that US, Turkish, UAE, Qatari, Saudi, Jordanian and Israeli intelligence (mostly US) is working closely with the rebels in an effort to deliberately target Russians. So the US is actually killing Russians in Syria deliberately and has been doing so forever.

Mostly this shows the folly of pacifists or isolationists ever voting Republican. Republicans have been the party of the hawks ever since the Cold War and it hasn’t slowed down yet. Of course Trump shifted to ultra-hawk because he is a hard US conservative and almost all of these people are fanatical warmongers. The Republicans have been far more hawkish than the Democrats since 1946.

The Democrats may be the party of Humanitarian Bombers, but the Republicans don’t even pretend to that. Instead, it’s all about how many people you can kill, civilians or not. Civilian deaths in Syrian and Iraq skyrocketed after Trump “took the gloves off” (something Republicans always do – gloves are for soft Democratic girly men). Why was this a good thing? Why did Trump massacre all of these Syrian and Iraqi civilians and why are bloodthirsty Americans cheering for this slaughter?

When East Aleppo was liberated, there were intense negotiations at the end to rescue 12 US intelligence officers who were holed up with the Al Qaeda rebels until the bitter end. Websites even published the names of these men.

Here again, the Western media is screaming. Humanitarian corridors to evacuate civlians have been activated and regular aid convoys are getitng through. The strikes have been mostly surgical as in East Aleppo. The US is just freaking out because it’s Al Qaeda type jihadis are getting defeated in this Damascus suburb. The US wants to keep its jihadis in East Aleppo to rain mortars down on Damascus every day to show that Assad cannot even control his own capital. It’s mostly an appearances thing, but then appearances and symbolism play greater roles in warfare than most know.

There haven’t been any hospitals stricken in Ghouta. Remember when “the last hospital in East Aleppo” got destroyed 15-20 times over a period of months. It was always “the last hospital in Aleppo.” How many last hospitals in Aleppo were there? There can’t have been more than one. The artillery and airstrikes in Aleppo were mostly surgical. Many of the hospitals bombed had long since been taken over as rebel bases. This is something the US media never told you. Yes, some civilians are getting their property taken away from them, but that is because they supported the rebels. It has nothing to with ethnicity and there is no ethnic cleansing. Sunni Arabs who supported Assad are to some extent displacing Sunni Arabs who supported the rebels.

There was another false flag chemical weapons attack in Ghoutha earlier, championed by pathological liar Nicki Haley. Western officials warned of the attack earlier, a sure sign that this was another false flag. So far, all chemical weapons attacks in Syria have been rebel false flags. I have studied all of them, and I haven’t seen one attack by the Syrian government yet. The Syrian government simply does not use chemical weapons. It’s not that they are nice people. If you are a rebel or rebel supporter, you may be arrested and taken prisoner by the army and transferred to a military prison. The death rate is high in that prisoner and 10-15,000 prisoners may have already been executed, mostly by hanging. That said, chemical weapons and massacres of villagers are not the SAA’s style. They’re nasty, but they are just not that type of nasty.

Of course, a few days after the fake attack, the SAA liberated this Ghouta town and promptly discovered a chemical weapons factory. The rebels had been producing their own chemicals and then releasing them in false flag attacks as they have been doing since the start of the war. Even the US military now admits that most if not all of the chemical weapons attacks in this war so far were not done by the Syrian government. Amazing – the military tells the truth where the controlled (US Pravda) media never does.

Ghouta is 70% cleared. Many rebels have left on buses to be bussed to other rebel zones,mostly in Idlib. A number of others have taken advantage of an amnesty program that has been offered by the government for years now. Today, 10,000 civilians fled to safety via a humanitarian corridor. The rebels have been firing at these corridors for some time now, shooting at civilians who are trying to flee. A number have been killed in this way.

Great article from Global Research. I am not sure if this war is actually going to happen. Israel’s apparent causus belli for the war is because they say that Iran has built a missile factory in Lebanon. Iran has indeed built a missile factory in Lebanon. I am not sure where it is and why Israel cannot take it out. Maybe it is underground. I would guess that it is in the Bekaa Valley.

The missile count for Hezbollah is not correct. Hezbollah actually 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel. There are reports that only six of those are precision-guided, but that is not correct. I don’t know how many precision-guided missiles they have, but they have a lot more than six.

The Lebanese Army is not very good. The effective army of Lebanon is Hezbollah. That is why they had 85% support in a recent poll in Lebanon. A recent move by Hezbollah to consolidate power among itself and its allies in the Parliament actually had the support of 47% of Lebanese Christians. Hezbollah is in an alliance with, among others, General Aoun’s Christian faction. As you can see, Lebanon is a lot more complex than Christians versus Muslims.

The real enemies of Hezbollah are the Lebanese Sunnis around President Hariri. Recently he went to Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis, with a go-ahead from the US, actually kidnapped him and forced him to stay in Arabia. They also demanded that he resign from the Presidency. He resigned so they would let him go, but when he got back to Lebanon, he withdrew his resignation and once again assumed his position.

The Saudis think that Lebanon is their bitch, but they are wrong. The Hariri faction does not have wide support in Lebanon – maybe 20-25% support. The Saudis were trying to provoke a crisis in Lebanon by having Hariri resign. This might set off internal conflict in Lebanon, which the Saudis want, or it might have been to cause a crisis as an excuse to attack Lebanon. “Hariri Resigns, Calls Lebanon a Hezbollah Dictatorship” would be the headlines, and then the US, Israel or Arabia would use that as a go-ahead to be humanitarian bombers and attack Lebanon “to restore democracy.”

Make no mistake about it, the Saudis want Hezbollah gone. They also want Iran dead and gone. Neither is going anywhere soon.

Iran, Hezbollah (Lebanon), and Syria form the Axis of Resistance. These are the only three official state enemies that Israel has left. They’ve taken out Libya and Iraq. If the Houthis win in Yemen, they might join the Axis of Resistance also. The Gulf states are not friendly to Israel, but Israel does not regard them as enemy states. They even have a long term alliance with the Saudis. Israel has a peace treaty with Jordan and Egypt. However, popular opinion in both countries is dead set against Israel, but both are dictatorships that do not represent popular will.

The Israel-hostile Muslim Brotherhood was replaced by a secular dictator supported by the US, Israel, and the Saudis. The Saudis hate the Muslim Brotherhood because they see them as rivals who want to rule Saudi Arabia. Doctrinally, there is not much difference between the two. I believe Qatar dislikes the MB also for the same reason. The MB is huge in Jordan and occupies many seats in Parliament. Hamas is the MB of Palestine, but they never talk about that because Palestine is quite secular, and the MB is not popular there for that reason. The MB is big among Sunnis in Northern Lebanon. Of course they have always been huge in Egypt – their birthplace. Hassan al-Banna created the MB in Egypt in 1928.

Lebanon as a state absolutely hates Israel. They have no relations with them, and the two are officially still at war, as Israel never signed an armistice with Lebanon in 1949. Libya has been neutralized as a state and is no threat to Israel. The new government of Tunisia is saying that they want diplomatic relations with Israel, and this is setting off huge demonstrations in Tunisia. Algeria is not friendly with Israel, but they are no threat either. The same is true in Morocco.

Turkey is also unfriendly, but they are no threat either, and they have been working closely with the Israelis in Syria. Israeli and Turkish intelligence were embedded in Al Qaeda in Syria, along with US, Saudi, and UAE intelligence. If you recall back when Aleppo was finally being liberated, there were intense negotiations going on at the end because there were some allied intelligence officers who had taken refuge in the last holdouts of the city. This included 10-12 US intelligence agents who were embedded in Syrian Al Qaeda.

A lot of people in the region are playing a very dirty game these days!

This previously published article (December 2017) on Global Research reveals the well-calculated plan of the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia on inciting a “civil war” in Lebanon to defeat Hezbollah.

Israel – seemingly leading the squad with the green signal from Washington – has just fabricated yet another grounds for war.

***

Washington’s plan to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has ultimately failed. Now Lebanon seems to be in the cross-hairs with tensions between Israel and Hezbollah on the same level that led to the 2006 Lebanon war. There is also the possibility that a new offensive against Syria that might take place as Washington maintains its troop levels in the devastated country caused by ISIS and other terrorists groups they supported. Various reports suggests that the Pentagon may reveal that there are close to 2,000 U.S. troops stationed in Syria even though ISIS has been defeated. So why is Washington staying in Syria? Will there be another attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the near future? Most likely, yes. Adding the Trump administration’s continued hostilities towards Iran, the drumbeats of a new war in the Middle East is loud and clear.

Israel, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have one main objective at the moment and that is to destabilize Lebanon and attempt to defeat Hezbollah before they prepare for another offensive in Syria to remove Assad from power. Before they declare an all-out war on Iran, they must neutralize their allies, Hezbollah and Syria, which is by far an extremely difficult task to accomplish.

The Israeli government knows that it cannot defeat Hezbollah without sacrificing both its military and civilian populations. Israel needs the U.S. military for added support if their objective is to somewhat succeed. Israel and the U.S. can continue its support of ISIS and other terrorist groups to create a new civil war in Lebanon through false-flag terror operations which in a strategic sense, can lead to an internal civil war.

Can Hezbollah and the Lebanese military prevent terrorist groups from entering its territory? So far they have been successful in defeating ISIS on the Lebanon-Syria border and will most likely be successful in preventing a new U.S.-supported terrorist haven in Lebanon. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri who originally resigned from his post while visiting the Saudi Kingdom and then suspended his resignation is a sign that a political crisis has been set in motion. So what happens next?

The Curse: Lebanon’s Natural Resources and the Greater Israel Project

In the case of a devastating war on Lebanon, with a civil war intact, Israel would surely attempt to take control over Lebanon’s natural resources. Since Trump got in the White House, Israel has expanded its Jewish settlements through land seizures throughout Palestine at unprecedented levels and with the occupation of the Golan Heights (a Syrian territory), they already control a portion of oil, gas, and vital water supplies. Lebanon would be a huge bonus.

In 2013, Lebanese Energy Minister Gebran Bassil estimated that Lebanon has around 96 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves and 865 million barrels of oil offshore. With Lebanon’s political chaos and Israel preparing for a long-term war with Hezbollah, all of this leads to Israel Shahak’s The Zionist Plan for the Middle East which states the intended goal for the fragmentation of Lebanon and other adversaries in the Middle East:

3) This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme. This theme has been documented on a very modest scale in the AAUG publication Israel’s Sacred Terrorism (1980), by Livia Rokach. Based on the memoirs of Moshe Sharett, former Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach’s study documents, in convincing detail, the Zionist plan as it applies to Lebanon and as it was prepared in the mid-fifties.

4) The first massive Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 bore this plan out to the minutest detail. The second and more barbaric and encompassing Israeli invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, aims to effect certain parts of this plan which hopes to see not only Lebanon but Syria and Jordan as well in fragments.

This ought to make mockery of Israeli public claims regarding their desire for a strong and independent Lebanese central government. More accurately, they want a Lebanese central government that sanctions their regional imperialist designs by signing a peace treaty with them. They also seek acquiescence in their designs by the Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian, and other Arab governments as well as by the Palestinian people. What they want and what they are planning for is not an Arab world, but a world of Arab fragments that is ready to succumb to Israeli hegemony. Hence, Oded Yinon in his essay, “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980’s,” talks about “far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967” that are created by the “very stormy situation [that] surrounds Israel.

Israel is gearing up for a long and devastating war against Hezbollah, an Iranian-ally which is based in Lebanon’s southern region to deter Israel’s expansionist ideas. As Saudi Arabia (Israel’s closest ally in the region) continues its immoral and devastating war on Yemen, it is raising tensions with Iran. According to Thomas L. Friedman’s article Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, At Last praising who he calls “M.B.S.” or Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, for his reformist policies. According to Friedman:

“Iran’s “supreme leader is the new Hitler of the Middle East,” said M.B.S. “But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn’t work. We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.”

The Trump administration’s continued support of the Saudi Monarchy which negotiated an arms deal worth billions has only emboldened the Saudi government to take an aggressive stand towards its adversaries in the Middle East namely, Iran.

Lebanon Prepares for Another War

On November 21st, Reuters published an article titled Lebanon army chief warns of Israel threat amid political crisis based on Lebanon’s Army Chief warning his troops to be on high alert concerning Israel’s aggressive behavior along the southern border. It was reported:

“Lebanon’s army chief told his soldiers on Tuesday to be extra vigilant to prevent unrest during political turmoil after the prime minister quit, and accused Israel of “aggressive” intentions across the southern frontier” despite Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s return to Lebanon and decision to put his resignation on hold.

“Troops should be ready to “thwart any attempt to exploit the current circumstances for stirring strife” and that “the exceptional political situation that Lebanon is going through requires you to exercise the highest levels of awareness.”

Israel understands that a defeat against Hezbollah and the Lebanese military will be absolutely difficult to accomplish, therefore preparations to engage Hezbollah this time will be an effort to create as much damage as possible and reduce their military capabilities, maybe in time for U.S. troops to enter the war through Syria and coordinate targets with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). As I mentioned earlier, and may I add with an interesting choice of words, a report published by Reuters on November 24th suggests that the Pentagon might announce how many troops they have in Syria:

Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon could as early as Monday publicly announce that there are slightly more than 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria. They said there was always a possibility that last minute changes in schedules could delay an announcement. That is not an increase in troop numbers, just a more accurate count, as the numbers often fluctuate.

A War That No One Will Win

The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), an establishment think-tank based in New York City published an article on July 30th of this year by neocon warmonger Eliot Abrams who was a deputy assistant and deputy national security adviser for President George W. Bush titled The Next Israel-Hezbollah Conflict admits that “the next war is a war that will not be “won” by Israel or Hezbollah.”

Abrams said that “Israel’s realistic war aims will not match the damage it will suffer—and the damage it will necessarily inflict” in reference to a strategic assessment by a report by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies titled Political and Military Contours of the Next Conflict with Hezbollah by Gideon Sa’ar, an Israeli politician and a former Likud member of the Knesset, and Ron Tira, a strategist, Israeli Air Force officer and pilot, highlights what Israel’s realistic goals should be:

Israel’s objectives in a future conflict will be derived first and foremost from what it wants to achieve in the distinct context (such as, for example, preventing Hezbollah’s buildup of certain qualitative edge capabilities or preventing deployment of high quality Iranian weapon systems in Syria).

But a review of the fundamental data reveals a few “generic” objectives that could be applicable in many contexts: postponing the following conflict, shaping the rules for the routine times that will follow the conflict, increasing deterrence with respect to Hezbollah and third parties, undermining the attractiveness of Hezbollah’s war paradigm (use of rockets and missiles hidden among the civilian population), preserving Israel’s relations with its allies, and creating the conditions to reduce Iranian involvement in the post-war reconstruction of Lebanon, as well as imposing new and enforceable restrictions on the freedom of access of the Iran-Alawite-Hezbollah axis.

The strategic assessment mentioned what realistic goals Israel can achieve when the conflict takes place according to the assessment:

There is only a limited range of “positive” and achievable objectives that Israel can hope to attain from Hezbollah and from Lebanon. While the purpose of an armed conflict is always political, in many contexts it is hard to find a political objective that is both meaningful and achievable at a reasonable cost, and that is the reason for the basic lack of value that can be found in an Israel- Hezbollah military conflict.

The reason that an Israeli defeat over Hezbollah is impossible according to Mr. Abrams’s conclusion is because of Russia’s presence in the region:

That’s because Russia cannot be expelled, Lebanon will remain roughly half-Shia, and Hezbollah will survive—as will its relationship with Iran. After the war, the best assumption would be that Hezbollah will rebuild as it did after 2006. But Hezbollah would achieve nothing positive in such a conflict, suffering immense damage and bringing immense destruction upon Lebanon. Its only possible “gain” is the damage it would inflict on Israel. In a way this is the only “good news.”

Israel’s Economy During Wartime

David Rosenberg’s opinion piece Israel’s Next War: We Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet on the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict in the Israel-based news source Haaretz explains the consequences of war and how it effects Israel’s economy. Rosenberg said that:

In 2014, the missile war wasn’t a threat so much as a spectacle, as Israelis watched Iron Dome missiles bring down Qassam rockets, to applause. Score one for the home team.

However, Rosenberg claims that the next war with Hezbollah will be different, in fact it will effect Israel’s economy in several ways:

The next war isn’t going to look like that. The round figure everyone uses for Hezbollah’s missile arsenal is 100,000. That is a suspiciously round figure and is probably wrong, but no one disputes that the Shiite militia is well-armed, and more importantly, many of its missiles carry much more powerful warheads and are much more accurate than they were in 2006. Hezbollah’s arsenal includes attack drones and coast-to-sea missiles, too. For its part, Israel is also better prepared. Iron Dome, which is designed to bring down short-range rockets, has been complemented by the introduction of the David’s Sling and Arrow systems, designed to intercept long-range rockets and ballistic missiles, respectively.

But against an onslaught of thousands of missiles, no Domes, Slings or Arrows will be able to provide the kind of defense Israelis have grown used to. Israel’s infrastructure and economic activity are vulnerable to even a limited missile attack from Hezbollah. Geographically, Israel is a small country with no hinterland, which means facilities for electric power and water are concentrated in small areas. More than a quarter of electric power is generated at just two sites. Natural gas is produced at a single offshore field and delivered via a single pipeline. A large portion of our exports derive from a single industrial plant. A prolonged missile war will almost certainly bring business to a halt.

Israel’s economy will shrink within a short-time period, according to Rosenberg:

In the worst-case scenario, a post-war Israel would no longer be seen by global investors and businesses as a safe place to put their money and do deals. Imagine Startup Nation without the constant flow of cross-border capital and mergers and acquisitions. The fantasy land of the last 11 years would disappear in a matter of days or weeks.

Rosenberg is correct. For example, during the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict, Israel was faced with economic uncertainties. The Times of Israel published an article during the conflict with an appropriate title War depresses people, economy; strong shekel harmful clarified what experts said on how the economy would be effected during a “drawn-out” conflict:

Experts temper the pessimism by noting that in the past, the Israeli economy has been resilient. If the current conflict is resolved quickly, there may be little cause for concern. On the other hand, a drawn out conflict in Gaza may cause investors to worry about the country’s stability and could cause long term damage to Israel’s reputation and position as a key player in the global economy.

“Our key concerns are the openness of the Israeli economy and our ability to be a key player in the global markets,” Zvi Eckstein, former deputy governor of the Bank of Israel and dean of the School of Economics at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC). Herzliya noted in an interview with The Times of Israel. “It’s really still a key uncertainty how the conflict will end up,” said Eckstein. “Most people predict we will get back to the same relatively stable geopolitical situation as we were in early July, and if so, I would say the economy would rebound back later next year. But if not, the threat to Israel’s economy would be quite devastating.”

That conflict was against a weaker adversary, Hamas. For starters, a war with Hezbollah, Lebanon, and Syria however would have a negative impact on Israel’s tourism industry where it receives more than 3 million tourists (mainly from the U.S. and Europe) per year. Israel’s level of production will also take a hit. The Street published an interesting article How Is Israel’s Economy Affected by the Current War? explaining what happened to Israel’s economy during the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict:

The Israeli economy suffers directly from reductions in productivity every time missile alert sirens send the country’s residents into bomb shelters. The economic costs of the war are estimated upwards of $2.9 billion, and already the war has soaked up 1.2% of the GDP. In the event that quiet prevails after a ceasefire is reached, the Israeli economy is resilient enough to withstand the costs of this operation.

History reflects that the Israeli economy surged at a rate of 6% prior to the 2006 Lebanon war and then slowed down to 2.9% prior to this current conflict. The tourism sector is going to be particularly hard hit, and if a third Intifada ensues, the economic costs for Israel could be crippling. Since a big chunk of Israel’s workforce is enlisted in the IDF, productivity declines are widespread and costs are mounting. The IMA (Israel Manufacturers Association) has already listed a figure of $240 million in losses as a result of the war effort.

Another War, Another Tragedy

Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. want to permanently eliminate the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance, and to achieve that goal, Lebanon will have to become another Libya, causing more chaos in an already volatile situation. The only beneficiaries in this coming war are Israel and the U.S., if of course, they are victorious. The U.S. and their allies would re-establish themselves as the hegemonic power in the Middle East with absolute control over the natural resources including oil, gas, and water. Israel would also expand and conquer more territory for Greater Israel. Saudi Arabia would remain a vassal state with more political leverage over its neighbors.

And if Saudi Arabia foolishly decided to go to war with Iran, the House of Saud will inevitably collapse, since Iran is much more stronger, militarily speaking. Washington plans to keep its military presence in Syria are a signal that removing Assad from power is still on the agenda. Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Trump administration (decertifying the Iran Nuclear Deal with the intention to eventually kill the deal) is a recipe for a planned long-term conflict. Israel’s economy would suffer a major setback if they were to launch an attack against Hezbollah.

Besides, the fact that a war against Hezbollah would mean that missiles would constantly strike within Israel creating a massive amount of stress on Israeli citizens and a downturn of the economy would only add another dimension to the wide-reaching full-scale war. Israel hopes that Hezbollah will be temporally neutralized until the U.S. Congress and the Trump Administration jointly approve another military and economic aid package worth billions in time to continue its wars. Then there is the possibility of a joint U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Israeli orchestrated attack on Syria to remove Assad from power to ultimately isolate Iran, but with Russia and China backing Iran, it would be a no-win situation. The biggest loser in all of its foreign policy blunders is the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Israel’s plan to launch more aggressive wars against its neighbors to further an expansionist objective would come at a great cost to Israeli citizens, as their economy sinks into the rabbit hole, and the threat of incoming missiles from southern Lebanon makes it that much more worst. Lebanon and to an extent Israel will be once again devastated by a new war. For both sides of the border, it is a formula for disastrous consequences.

– An old Castroite Marxist revolutionary chant from Central America and South America, with roots back especially to the great Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the FMLN in El Salvador (who I used to buy guns for), the URNG in Guatemala, probably the ELN in Colombia, and probably the great FARC in Colombia.

All of these movements except the FARC were “Christian Communists” or “Catholic Communists.” Most of the rank and file guerrillas all the way up to the leadership were Catholics. In Nicaragua, leader Daniel Ortega was and still is a practicing Catholic and one of the top leaders of the Sandinistas was Tomas Borge, a Catholic priest. The ELN was led by a former Catholic priest named Camilo Torres, who traded his frock for an AK-47 and led a guerrilla group in the mountains of northwestern Colombia. He was killed soon after he started the ELN in 1964. The ELN has never renounced its Catholic roots and is a de facto “Catholic Marxist” organization.

The Eastern Catholic Church or Eastern Orthodox have been much more progressive than the Catholic hierarchy, but that was not so at the beginning of the century when the Cheka executed over 12,000 top ranking Orthodox officials in first several years of the Revolution. The Russian Orthodox Church or at least many believers are quite leftwing these days. They often hobnob with Communists, Leftists and even monarchists. Even the monarchists are pretty leftwing in Russia today. Russia is a place where everyone is leftwing. There is no Right in Russia. Well actually there is, but the Right has only 10-15% support. Putin’s party is defined as “Russian conservatism” but Putin says he still believes in the ideals of Communism and socialism which he regards as very similar to the Biblical values of the Russian Orthodox Church. This marriage is not unusual and high ranking Church officials even today regularly make pro-socialist and pro-Communist remarks. Sort of ” Jesus as a Bolshevik” if you will. Stalin himself was studying to be a priest in a sen\minary of the Georgian Orthodox Church when he gave it up to be a full-time bank robber/revolutionary. The thing is that you cannot understand Stalin at all until you understand his deep background in the Orthodox religion. Although Stalin called himself an atheist, he remained deeply Orthodox in his mindset until he died. He ever revived the Church during and after the war for patriotic reasons. Stalin was very much a social conservative and his social conservatism was deeply inflected by his Georgian Orthodox seminarian roots, which he never renounced.

The Orthodox Christian churches of the Arab World have always been leftwing, along with the Church in Iran and Turkey. George Habash, founder of the Marxist PFLP in Palestine, was a Greek Orthodox. Many of the rank and file even of the PFLP armed guerrilla have always been Orthodox Christians. The Greek Orthodox SSNP in Lebanon and Syria are practically Communists. Interestingly, this was the first group to widely use suicide bombings early in 1982 and 1983 in the first years of the Lebanese Civil War. Most of the first suicide bombings, up to scores or hundreds in first few years, were by Communists, often Christian Orthodox Communists. Many of these suicide bombers were even women. It was only later that the Shia adopted the technique.

The man who created the Baath Party, the Iraqi Michel Aflaq, was an Orthodox Christian. The party had Leftist roots as an officially socialist party. Tariq Aziz, high-ranking member of Saddam’s Baath party, was an Orthodox Christian and a Leftist. Assad’s party in Syria is a Leftist party. Most Syrian Orthodox Christians are strong supporters of Assad, the Baath Party and Leftism. Recently the Syrian Defense Minister was a Christian.

The few Orthodox Christians left in Turkey are typically Leftists.

Many Greek Orthodox are Leftists. Serbian Orthodox laypeople and hierarchy long supported Milosevic, who was a Communist.

The Russians who violently split away from Ukraine in the Donbass were so Leftist that they called their new states “people’s republics.” Most of the leadership and the armed forces are Orthodox Christians. The armed groups had priests serving alongside in most cases. They often led battlefield burials for the troops.

There are deep roots of this sort of thing in Russia. Tolstoy is very Christian in an Orthodox sense, but he is also often seen as a socialist. Dostoevsky’s work is uber-Christian from an Orthodox point of view and he is not very friendly to radicals. However, before he started writing, he was arrested for Leftist revolutionary activities and sentenced to prison in Siberia. Most of his colleagues were hanged and Dostoevsky only barely escaped by the tip of his nose. Dostoevsky was not very nice to the rich either. No Russian writer of that time was, not even Turgenev. The rich destroyed 19th Century Russia. Anyone with eyes can see that. It would have been hard for any artistic heart above room temperature to not hate the Russian rich and feel sympathy for the peasantry. Turgenev’s first books were paeans to the Russian peasantry, and he was raised on an estate!

Although the Muslim Brotherhood is officially opposed to Al Qaeda and tends to take a legalist and democratic approach to obtaining power, the organization is nevertheless very radical and many radical Muslims gravitate to the MB as the only game in town. In turn, as they radicalize in the MB, the more radicalized people spin off to Al Qaeda, ISIS and other radical jihadi groups. Then some of the Al Qaeda people spin back into the Brotherhood, this time hiding their radical views.

It is not well known, but Hamas is nothing less than the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. The MB is illegal in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Qatar. They led an uprising in 1982 in Syria where 30,000 people were killed. The survivors went to Europe and also to Saudi Arabia where they met up with Egyptian MB members who were working and teaching in the Kingdom. These MB religious folk were then in turn influenced by the allegedly quietist Wahhabism, the official doctrine of Saudi Arabia. The MB religious teachers then supercharged Wahhabism while Wahhabism itself radicalized the MB teachers in terms of Islamic doctrine. It was this mixture of the Ikhwan and Wahhabism that eventually morphed into bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. From and around Al Qaeda all sorts of other radical jihadi groups emerged, especially in Iraq and Syria. Most of the groups in Syria are either Al Qaeda linked or inspired or if not, are not a great deal different from Syrian Al Qaeda, now called Al Nusra.

Another origin of Al Qaeda was in Egypt where as above, the MB served as a nursery of sorts for Islamic radicals. Radicals kept spinning off the MB and forming more radicalized splits. Sayed Qutb was one of the first, and Al Qaeda is simply Qutbism writ large. He was executed by Nasser in the 1950’s.

Another split occurred in the late 1970’s, when another radical group spun off of the MB and evolved into various factions. One of these factions developed the Qutbist notion that the entire Muslim world was now living in a state of jahaliyya or pre-Islamic ignorance. The entire society of Muslim Egypt was tainted by infidel and anti-Islamic influences. Some of these people dropped out of society and went to live like hermits in caves in the desert. They saw the entire society as corrupt and evil, so they had no alternative but to completely drop out of it and live in isolated hermitage like early Christians.

It was here that Zayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian eye surgeon and bin Laden’s 2nd in command, got his start. He developed some followers in the city he lived in and he eventually dropped out of society and went to live in caves with the rest of the radicals.

Around this time, a lot of these radicals got wrapped up in plot to assassinate Anwar Sadat, mostly for the crime of making peace with Israel. The assassins, of which there were several, were ex-MB members who had spun off from the group. About 1,000 radicals were rounded up after the assassination. Al-Zawahiri was one of them. There is footage of a wild-eyed Zawahiri in a crowded jail cell with ~40 other men. He is gripping the cell bars and shouting along with many others.

After his release, Zawahiri went on to form the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. This and several other very radical jihadi groups waged war on the Egyptian state in the early 80’s. Zawahiri’s movement, which had ~1,500 members, was crushed by the state. Jihadis were taken out into the Egyptian desert, tied to a pole and left there. It didn’t take long for them to perish from lack of food or water. In this way, the movement was crushed. Zawahiri fled Egypt and may have taken up with bin Laden in Sudan for a while.

The remains of Islamic Jihad combined with the nascent Al Qaeda forming in the Kingdom via the mixture of Egyptian and Syrian MB and Saudi Wahhabis to form the nucleus of the early Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda got increasingly radicalized during bin Laden’s stay there. Finally both men went to Afghanistan for the Afghan jihad which radicalized huge numbers of Muslims all over the world, mostly in the Arab World. As they fought in Afghanistan, they become increasingly radicalized. Zawahiri had always argued for fighting the “near enemy” first – the secular Arab regimes, but bin Laden’s radical theory was to switch from a war only against the near enemy to a war against the “far enemy,” which bin Laden called the US for its support for Israel and the secular Arab dictatorships.

The MB is hated and outlawed in Qatar and Saudi Arabia more on the grounds of rivalry than anything else. Qatar and the Saudis see the Ikhwan as a threat to royal power. After a military coup overthrew the elected MB government in Egypt, the new leader Sisi has formed a major alliance with the Saudis and the Qataris. The Saudis have responded by flooding Sisi’s government with oil money.

In Jordan, most of the Parliament is made of the MB members, which is one reason why the powers of the Parliament have been severely limited by the King.

The MB is quite active in north Lebanon near Tripoli where Lebanon’s 20% Sunnis live. These people have become increasingly radicalized and are now engaged in open warfare with Alawis living in some of these cities. Some of these Sunnis also seem to have gone to Syria to join up with the jihadi groups. The MB in this part of Lebanon is known for its dislike of Lebanon’s Shia and Hezbollah.

The MB was formed by Hassan Al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher, in 1922. It is one of the oldest radical Muslim groups in the world.

Tata writes: Maybe you could help me understand a phenomenon. In the Middle East and especially in the Gulf countries, homosexuality is punishable by the death penalty and decapitation. Paradoxically, I have often heard that the Arabs of the Gulf have many homo relations between them because they do not have access to women. It seems that it is rampant in the Gulf, and apparently the fear of dying does not stop them.

But I read a bizarre story about a Gulf prince who got caught in a fight in a gay nightclub in London with his lover. This guy is a hypermasculine Arab man, and he doesn’t look gay. But maybe Arabs have too much testosterone and are always horny, that’s why they put a tent on the head of their women and could fuck anything. I don’t know, it’s just a reflection.

The prince is in London, and there are no obstacles to have contacts with women, dozens of women if he want. He drives a Ferrari, he is rich, he is a prince, but he continues to go to gay nightclubs and avoids women? Why? Another rumor is of another prince from the Gulf who allegedly murdered one of his employees with whom he had gay relations. It seems that there is a mentality in the Gulf that if the guy is active rather than passive, he is not gay. Are these guys gay, bi or straight? Can a hetero sodomize a guy and be hetero nevertheless and continue to act full macho? I find this crazy and I do not understand this mentality.

I have heard that in the Arab World, you are not considered gay if you play the male role in gay sex. This is true in Morocco and Egypt at the very least. 20-30% of young Egyptian and Moroccan men have played the male role in gay sex. The guys who play the passive role are considered faggots. They are not necessarily persecuted though. It’s more that they are used sexually as a surrogate female by straight men.

William Burroughs and Paul Bowles lived in Morocco for years. Allen Ginsberg visited Burroughs in Tangier. I have also heard that Oscar Wilde went to Morocco with some other European gay men and had sex with teenage boys there. All of these men were basically gay. All of Burroughs neighbors knew that he was gay and was having sex with teenage street boys, but no one ever turned him in. I never heard the dynamics of the type of sex that Burroughs, Bowles and Wilde were engaging in with those Moroccan street boys. Apparently there was quite a bit of this going on in Moroccan society, and as long as you were very quiet about it, no one cared.

There is a lot of gay sex in Saudi Arabia. There are even quite a few of what could be termed gay bars. I am not sure of the sexual orientation of the men who are doing such things. Obviously if you prevent men from having sex with women, a lot of them are going to start screwing guys instead. That’s just the way men are.

Supposedly nothing is done about all of this gay sex in Saudi Arabia as long as they are very quiet and discreet about it. When they start getting loud about it, the authorities crack down. There were a number of arrests in Saudi Arabia recently at a gay wedding of two Saudi men getting informally married. There were female impersonators there, and the whole thing got out of hand pretty fast. The authorities raided the party and made a number of arrests.

Similarly, a group of gay men threw a wild gay party on board a boat on the Nile River recently. This was considered to be flaunting it, and these men were arrested, tried and sentenced to a few years in prison. The trial caused quite a fuss.

But I have heard that there are quite a few gay couples living quiet lives in Cairo. Everyone knows about it, and no one cares.

I read a recent article by a gay man who went to Egypt on vacation. He was on the Nile in Lower Egypt where he was renting boat boys to take him out on the river. He told how some of these teenage boys were openly propositioning him. Later he met with a gay couple living quietly in Cairo. Everyone knew about them, but it was accepted as long as they were discreet about it.

I read another piece by a gay man who went to Kuwait. He said Arab men of all ages were openly propositioning him. He was shocked at how open it all was. He went down to the beach at night, and he said there were all these gay men there cruising for sex on the beach, and quite a few of them were actually engaging in sex on the beach. No one was doing anything about it, but it all had to be kept on the down low.

Nevertheless, it is different in every country. The Shia take a very hard line against gay sex, and many gay men have been murdered in Iraq.

~8,000 gay men have been executed by the clerical regime in Iran.

In Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani issued a fatwa saying that gay men should be killed. After that, there were a lot of murders of Iraqi gay men.

Hezbollah is normally pretty liberal about the things that they allow under the rule, but they take a hard line on male homosexuality too. They don’t kill gay men in Hezbollah areas, but they do beat them up.

Male homosexuality is not accepted at all in Palestine, and gay men are often murdered in the Palestinian areas. Some have even sought refugee status in Israel as a result of this, and Israel did grant some of them this status. Male homosexuality is frowned upon in Syria and Lebanon, but there is quite a bit of it anyway. There are quite a few gay men among the Syrian refugees in Beirut, but they live in absolute terror as male homosexuality is frowned upon on Lebanese Islamic society.

They were also persecuted in Syria. I know of one case where gay men were arrested by Assad’s regime and imprisoned for a while. They were made to have sex with each other in front of Syrian police at the jail while the police sat back and laughed and ridiculed them. Of course, ISIS has been executing gay men in areas under its control, usually by throwing them off the top of tall buildings.

I know nothing about male homosexuality in Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Yemen, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Sudan or in the Islamic parts of Africa. Nor do I know much about it in the rest of the Islamic World, but I do know something about male homosexuality in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is quite a complex situation. Maybe for a later post.

I’m not much of an expert on gay rights because as a straight man, the subject does not interest me much.

However, it has long been rumored that the leader of Oman is a gay. He has never admitted it, but many think he is anyway. I understand that people in Oman don’t care much one way or the other about their ruler being gay.

In this comment, Churchill got Prince Ibn Saud to agree to let the British put the House of Saud in power in Saudi Arabia in order that they could control Mecca and Medina and to allow the Saudis to become “the Kings of the Arabs.” In recent, Ibn Saud would agree to let Weitzmann invade, conquer and usurp Palestine’s Arabs to create a Jewish Homeland.

It appears to be dated March 4, 1941, but the deep alliance between the British and the vile House of Saud goes way back before that.

Iran: Socialism’s Ignored Success Story

May 23, 2017

by Ramin Mazaheri

Iran just completed their presidential election, but this article will not discuss the candidates, the result or the political consequences.

I work for Iran’s Press TV, which essentially makes me a civil servant, and I think it is correct for me to not reveal who I voted for in order to preserve my independence within the government. I’m quite happy to work for “the people” instead of “a person” – as in private media – and I will support which ever candidate the people choose.

Why will I support Iran’s government, whoever is in charge? Truly, it is not for my paycheck.

I support Iran because I support socialism where ever I can find it, and Iran has socialism in abundance.

Iranian Socialism has been so successful at redistributing wealth to the average person; has safeguarded the nation’s security despite being ringed by US military bases and repeated threats; has grown the economy despite an international blockade; has produced a foreign policy motivated on political principles; and has fought against the divisive identity politics which undermine human solidarity.

I have actually seen Iran over the decades, unlike 99% of the journalists who claim to understand Iran, so you can’t dissuade me.

And I’m not even going to try to persuade you. This is not that article, either.

This article is to lay out for left-wing readers and supporters of socialism what should be crystal clear: Iran is a socialist nation. Even more than that: Iran is a socialist success story.

Iran, like all nations, has had its unique developmental history; of course we have been reading Marx just as long as anyone else, as well.

But the most convincing and simplest way I can put it to non-Iranians is this: Europe came to socialism through industrialization, theory and war, but Iran came to socialism through its religious and moral beliefs. The ends are the same, and that is all that should matter to anyone who is truly trying to promote socialism for the benefits it brings to the average person.

The Problem Is Not Us, It Is You

I repeat: The problem is not us, it is you…when it comes to looking at Iran’s contributions to socialism.

I believe that around 99% of Westerners have no idea at all what Iran is really like. Unfortunately, this total ignorance about Iran and the Muslim world is the historical norm in the West.

The greatest contribution of Middle East scholar Edward Said was that his book, “Orientalism”, definitively proved through historical scholarship that the West has never, ever, ever been favorable towards the Muslim world.

Not in the 8th century, when Muslims were occupiers of the Iberian Peninsula, not in the following centuries when Islam was an ideological competitor to Christianity; not in the 15th century, when the Ottoman Empire occupied the Balkans; not in the 19th century, when the Europeans occupied the Middle East & North Africa; not in 1916, when they redrew the borders for the West’s benefit; not in 1945, when they bombed countries like Syria which had fought on their side against the Germans and the Italians; not in the 1960’s, when their reaction to independence was neocolonialism; not in 1979, when they created the forerunner of the Taliban; not during 2 wars in Iraq, a war in Syria today, etc.

Said’s point was: Never has the West viewed or treated the Muslim world as equals, much less intellectual equals.

Given this history, why should us Iranians expect the reality of our high-achieving modernity to be accepted and admired?

LOL, believe me, I am over it! I write this to enlighten you, not me! I humbly hope that it works.

I will address the elephant in the room, and quickly: Yes, I assume that a large part of this prejudice is religious. Some Christians cannot accept that Islam promotes the most recent prophet of the monotheism which they both share.

Such religious prejudices are not my problem, and they do not blind my analysis of 2017 Iran.

No socialist believes in a “clash of civilizations” or “religious war”, anyway.

My point is not to criticize Europe for a lack of brotherhood with their fellow Abrahamic religion: My point is to criticize them in 2017 because most Westerners believe that that even the most leftist Iranian cannot even qualify as merely a “conservative social democrat”!

Can There Never Be a Muslim “Democrat” or an Iranian “Republican”?

The proof of this bias is the decades of Western support for the oppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian Revolution and any Muslim attempt to allow their religion into their politics. This is even though Christian Democratic parties governed Europe for decades after WWII, and it is absurd to think that the Christian dogma is not upheld and promoted in European politics today.

So, if Iranians cannot even be allowed to fulfill 19th century notions, why would the West accept that 2017 Iran can be even more truly leftist than the merely centrist ideology of European social democracy?

Of course, the average European cannot accept this, and this is why Western Socialists are aghast at my idea that Iran is an “ignored Socialist success story”.

The radical left of European Socialism, which seeks to destroy organized religion, is especially aghast, but they are a tiny minority and on the way out, thankfully. They do not realize that they have already been drastically tempered, if not ousted, in the still-Socialist countries they purportedly admire: Cuba is full of Santeria and Pope pictures, yin-yangy Confucianism is being promoted in China, etc.

But these Western radicals are a minority who simply cannot accept that spirituality cannot be rubbed out, largely because they see it as a choice or a social conditioning instead of a part of many people’s intrinsic nature (if not theirs). A modern Socialist must accept that this fight has already been fought and decided. The capitalists certainly advance as we chase our tails….

Even if leftist detractors can get past religion, they immediately will talk about Iran’s human rights faults.

I respond: Yawn yawn yawn African-Americans fill US jails; Muslims fill France’s jails; this is the centenary of the British-orchestrated Persian Famine, which killed 8-10 million people and actually made Iran the biggest victim of WWI, that is just one Western/capitalist inspired famine/death/human rights violation yawn yawn yawn.

I am not here to say Iran is perfect – only God can be – I am saying that Iran is absolutely no worse than the West. It is an undeniable fact that the current Islamic Republic of Iran has far less blood on its hands than most – and Iran has not invaded a country in 300 years!

Religion, human rights – these are all classic diversions from the facts presented against socialist societies, and Iran certainly is one.

Iran Checks All the Boxes as a Socialist Nation and as Revolutionary Socialist

What are the key components of socialism? Let’s clarify our terms.

The first is leadership by an avant-garde party committed to defending the revolution: Iran certainly has this, and it crosses over Principlist/Reformist party lines.

The second is central planning of the economy: Whoever had won, they would be largely implementing the 6th Five-year plan (2016-2021). And there is also the “Resistance Economy” approach promoted by many, which is certainly anti-globalization.

The third is control over the media: This is mixed – I would say Iran does not really have this in the traditionally Socialist sense. Cuba has no private media, for example, while Iran has dozens of private newspapers and innumerable TV satellites. But Iran does have limitations, so let’s check this box.

The fourth is support for foreign liberation movements: When the history of Palestinian liberation is finally written, just as a now-free South Africa thanks Cuba for sending troops to Angola, will not Palestinians do the same for Iran’s decades of support? The same with Lebanon and now Syria, correct?

The fifth is democratically devolving as much democracy as possible in order to empower the average person: There is no doubt that Iran is the most vibrant democracy in the Middle East, and by a huge margin. The difference between Iran’s social-democratic procedures and guarantees in 2017 when compared with 1978 is obviously laughable. I write this from Paris, a nation in an 18-month state of emergency with no end in sight….

If your country has these five crucial components: Congratulations! You are in a socialist country!

A little bit more on each for the naysayers….

An Avant-Garde Party

Iran is a one-party system – that party defends the 1979 Revolution. China is a one-party system – promoting Chinese communism. Many would say that the US is a one-party system – promoting imperialist capitalism.

The difference between Iran & China and the US is that in the former their one-party systems are formalized, explicit and well-known; in the US it is informal, but just as strong, and maybe even stronger.

I don’t think this needs much further explanation but, for example, you cannot propose to end the Iranian Revolution and run for office. In France a presidential candidate in their recent election (Jean-Luc Melenchon) won 20% of the first-round vote by proposing to abolish France’s current 5th Republic.

Like all socialist countries, Iran is criticized for not having democracy but they do: it is simply within their own particular structure. Just as in the USSR, there was lively debate about how to advance their own system – should we following the right-wing model of socialism of Bukharin/Khrushchev or the left-wing model socialism of Lenin/Trotsky? – but there was no debate about deviating from their chosen national system, i.e. communism. When they did allow such debates under Gorbachev, Soviet Socialism was almost immediately subverted by capitalist reactionaries and consigned to oblivion.

Again, please examine the repression of communism in the US, South Korea, Greece, Italy, Chile, etc. for historical examples of capitalist “one-party systems”, which are definitely NOT avant-garde and promoting socialism….

The idea that Iran has no avant-garde party but is some sort of totalitarian structure governed by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is only expressed by those who are supremely ignorant about Iran. For the second presidential election in a row Hassan Rouhani won despite not seeming to be Khamenei’s preferred candidate, after all.

Central Planning of the Economy

I think I can illustrate Iran’s state of economic socialism with this anecdote: Back in 2013 all 8 presidential candidates were pushing for more privatization…not to promote capitalism, but because everything has already been nationalized for so long, LOL!

So Iran has already done the nationalizing, and maybe they need to do more? However, socialist countries have increasingly agreed that some revenue-producing businesses are needed to meet some of the basic needs of their people: North Korea has the Kaesong Industrial area, Cuba’s Port Mariel is giving some space to completely foreign-owned businesses, Vietnam and China have plenty of state-run capitalist enterprises, etc. The reality is that even producing things as simple as soap need some expertise, and very often only capitalist corporations can have that expertise.

That’s why the Iranian government went on a spending spree in 2016, but it was decidedly not your typical capitalism. (I do not want to appear to credit only the Rouhani administration because economic policy is produced by the entire government in 5-year development plans, as already noted.)

Iran was feted like a king in places like France and Italy because they were prepared to spend dozens of billions of euros. But what pleased me was how Iran spent: They demanded equal partnerships, joint ventures and technology transfers.

These are the ways in which foreign investment can be mutually beneficial and not exploitative – this was good for France too. I am not a dogmatic person who is absolutely against all capitalism, but I am against all exploitative capitalism.

My point is: It was a socialist spending spree, not a capitalist one. Iran did not just give money away; they did not waste money on vanity projects; this was not one billionaire dealing with another for their own benefit; they invested in Iran via long-term central planning, i.e. the socialist view of economic management.

This is not like France’s ruling “Socialist Party” recently selling off national industrial jewel Alstom to the United States’ General Electric: The French people got nothing for that. That was capitalism; that was globalization

Iran is not in favor of globalization – they are not even a member of the World Trade Organization, unlike 164 other countries. Some will say this is solely due to the opposition of the United States, but it is not: As many in Iran said during the election: membership in the WTO is against Iran’s principles…and these are socialist principles regarding the economy – there is nothing about the WTO in the Koran.

Control over the Media

It’s true you can’t have Charlie Hebdo in Iran – hardly a major loss –but Iran is certainly no Cuba.

Iran’s refusal to crack down on TV satellites which permit reactionary, anti-revolutionary channels like BBC Persian and VOA Persian (UK and US government-funded respectively) appears to be a dangerous fire which Havana will not tolerate. This tolerance does give Iran “human rights” credibility with the West – well it doesn’t, but it should!

I would suggest that Iran is simply confident that foreign propaganda cannot overwhelm the obvious successes of the 1979 Revolution. I imagine that Cuba feels that they cannot take chances, being just 100 kilometers from the USA.

Of course, Cubans simply laugh at Western propaganda channels like the US government’s pathetic Radio Marti. Cubans are supremely intelligent politically and, after all, their education programs are decades older than Iran’s.

Iran, like Cuba and China, bans pornography. I note that such respect for sexuality and for women is a very basic tenet of Socialism. If your utopia includes unfettered access to porn I suggest that you are a libertarian, and not a socialist.

I remind again that the media glasnost implemented by Gorbachev was a major driver in the catastrophic implosion of the Russian Revolution. To privatize media means, necessarily, that you are giving those few people rich enough to actually start newspapers the chance to promote their obviously capitalist worldviews.

I, for one, am not about to cry over the lack of published capitalist, imperialist, sexist, racist, regressive anti-revolutionary nonsense, and neither are most Iranians. As sad as the Dutch may be about it – Iran is not Amsterdam!

Support of Foreign Liberation Movements

Some will say that Palestine is just a “distraction” from Iran’s own problems. Nonsense – this is a point of pride to all Iranians. This is a point of admiration for Iran from the entire Muslim world, just as it is a negative point for much of the Western world.

This is another way Iran is revolutionary Socialist country: they support oppressed countries on the basis of ideology. Perhaps Iran is not the “Mecca of Revolutionaries” which Algeria was in the 1960’s, but let’s agree that the rate and scope of revolutionary movements worldwide are at a much lower level today, sadly.

Russia may support Syria, for example, but it appears more for Moscow’s self-interest and the idea of national sovereignty – which is the idea of national self-interest – rather than a moral-based ideology.

Call Iran the same as Russia – no insult there – but you cannot deny that Iran supports Palestine for reasons which are clearly to the detriment of their own success, i.e., they do it out of solidarity and morality. Were Iran to recognize Israel they would surely have the international dogs called off them…but Iran is a revolutionary Socialist society, as you are hopefully agreeing with by now.

Iran is also an anti-racist society, like all modern socialist societies.

When it comes to religion they are extremely tolerant of ancient Iranian Zoroastrianism and all of the pre-Prophet Muhammad Abrahamic religions. Any religion after Prophet Muhammad? Well…it is an “Islamic” Revolution, after all.

This is perhaps a pedantic point but an important one on a verbal, Foucauldian level: Has there been any “revolution” in the world since WWI which was not “socialist”? I can’t think of any, because without a socialism component it cannot be a revolution – it can only be a continuation of the capitalist/feudalist/bourgeois status quo, or a military coup.

Empowering People

The two fundamental tenets of socialism are redistribution of wealth and empowering the average person so that they can reach their full potential. Dismantling the social roadblocks thrown up by capitalism against the non-wealthy has clearly been a major goal of the Islamic Revolution, and I can quite easily prove it has been achieved with a tremendous amount of real-world success.

Since 1990 – when the West’s attack dog of Iraq was beaten off – no country’s Human Development Index has improved more than Iran’s, with the lone exception of South Korea.

Everyone should take notice, especially Socialists, as it is we anti-capitalists who prize human development – not economic development – above all.

That’s why I’m going to leave the Human Development Index as the only proof of success. For me, I have so many other econometrics, anecdotes and personal reflections to prove that Iran has succeeded in creating a new, better, modern society that to do so is quite boring.

Bottom line: It is obvious that I do not have to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Despite the tremendous amount of opposition, violence and propaganda, Iran has advanced the most in the past 3+ decades.

I say “the most” because, unlike South Korea, Iran has done this without 30,000 US troops currently on its soil; it was not preceded by decades of brutal dictatorship which slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people (mainly leftists); and they did not collaborate with the Americans in the division of their nation which currently causes the greatest possibility of thermonuclear war.

Iran didn’t get to #1 as many others did: by capitalism and imperialism.

Iran’s recent election had a 73% voter turnout rate, ranking it #12 in the world. Unlike many of these other 11 countries, Iran does not compel citizens to vote. There is obviously tremendous support for the Iranian system from the Iranian people because…they are not blind to success, I would say!

The hardest thing to get people to do when it comes to socialism (or Iran) is to think realistically: Nobody can achieve “perfect” socialism. No country has 100% voter turnout. No country has zero human rights violations.

But for Iran you have add on another layer of misconception: Many of the “restrictions” in Iranian society predate 1979 by centuries: women were largely wearing the hejab before then; unmarried people, especially young women, also lived at home before 1979; alcohol could send you to prison then and now.

My point is: Iran is a culturally conservative nation, and it was like that long, long before 1979. You will have to simply trust me that Iranians don’t need a government to make them want to live in a society which appears conservative to modern Western standards.

Again, Iran is not Amsterdam, LOL! Maybe you can talk about the royal court in Shiraz in the 14th century as being a hotbed of drunken poetic reveling, but this is does not reflect the reality of life for the average person.

Only an Iranian will agree quickly with this statement and move on: Take away the 1979 Revolution and you would still have many of the same rules in place – they would just be enforced informally.

I will, lastly, put it this way: Take away the mullahs, and you still have to deal with my grandmother!!!!!

Today, the birthrate is 1.7 children per woman, the overall literacy rate is 93% and the right-wing Washington DC-based think-tank the Brookings Institution runs dumbfounded articles with headlines like “Are Iranian Women Overeducated?”.

All in 30+ years…and have you thought it was capitalism that did it?!

Socialists Who Ignore Iran Are Not Really Socialists At All

Do you still want to think that Iran is a country solely motivated by religious radicalism and not the ideals of socialism? Well, then I place you on the right and the left, and that is the point of this article.

It is bad enough that the right (capitalists, imperialists) not only co-opt Socialist ideas as their own (social security, Medicare, Medicaid, affirmative action programs, welfare, free schooling, free nurseries, etc.), but it is laughable when the left refuses to see the leftism in Iran because it does not fit with their preconceived, totally inflexible notions.

Any true Socialist/Communist should realize that attacking Iran is doing a capitalist’s job for them.

And how can someone who proclaims to be a “leftist” have the exact same interpretation of Iran as a right-wing capitalist does?

Again, it is simply laughable that Iran is “not” what it really is.

But this is what always happens: Chinese communism “is not really communism”…despite having 1-party rule, a state-run economy, control over the media, support for Vietnam and North Korea, and the 2nd highest HDI improvement from 1970-2010.

North Korean communism is just a “cult of personality”…despite expelling the Japanese, resisting the Americans, maintaining their independence, security and high-level of education. Cuba is just the Castro dictatorship and, again, not communism.

This is all anti-socialist propaganda – for capitalism there can never be ANY “Socialist success story”.

You remain adamant that you do not want to implement all the principles of the Iranian Islamic Revolution in your country?

Fine, it is your country to decide for as you like. Like I wrote, no worries – Iran hasn’t invaded in 300 years and it sure seems like our military is necessarily focused on defense.

But just because you disagree with some aspects of the 1979 Revolution I encourage you not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I remind you that I needed only one fact to prove that Iran has been improving at a rate which is essentially the best in the world over the last 3 decades – how far below Iran does your country rank, hmm?

I write this article because practically no media in the English language will ever pursue the links between Iran and socialism. We leftists know this not just anti-Iran bias, but a much larger anti-Socialist bias.

However, it is truly suicidal to ignore the left-wing successes in Iran because, even if you reject some of them, Iran has clearly found MANY modern solutions to our MANY modern problems: surely some of them can be of use to you, right? Is Iran ALL wrong?

Of course not – only Satan can be all wrong.

Therefore, I advise those fighting against capitalism and imperialism: Please afford Iran a bit more respect and interest than you would afford Satan!

And Now I Take Our Victory lap

I can only laugh at those who say Iran’s revolution has failed!

“Oh really? Who was the puppet that was installed? Who was the king that was restored? What is the name of the popular democratic revolution which replaced the peoples’ one of 1979, because I have not heard of it and I still see many familiar faces from 1979?”

The revolution has succeeded, and I am not sorry to say so.

Not that I care about your opinion – this is for YOUR own benefit: YOU will not win socialism, anti-capitalism or anti-imperialism in your country if you cannot learn from the successes of others.

But sadly, your inability to recognize socialism in Iran imperils all of us, because the people worldwide cannot win in the long term if even like-minded leftists cannot stick together to work against fascism, capitalism and racism.

But Iran, Cuba, China, etc. – we can win enough of these things for ourselves, at least.

We are doing just fine – steady as she goes, eh? All thanks to central planning, as the capitalists veer from crisis to crisis, with the 1% sucking up a greater percentage every time. Our election had huge participation rates, as usual, dwarfing the European cultures who probably want to claim they invented voting, along with everything else. Asia has heard it all before….

For the non-Western readers: I know that the vast majority of you already support Iran. I have talked with too many of you over my life – I know better. I also know that for us “field slaves” we have to give that impression in order to survive, sometimes, or at least to avoid annoyances.

Anyway, many Westerners appear to misunderstand Socialism completely: they don’t realize it is intrinsically a global idea; they think the Franco-German-Russian (European) variety is the only one. More Eurocentrism blinding them to reality, and necessarily limiting them….

But I look across the West and I see nothing but leftist failure after leftist failure: The fall of communism in Russia, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the obvious absorption of “left” parties into the dominant right-wing parties, the rise of austerity, the advance of globalization at the expense of national interests….

So the next time you look at Iran, you should applaud it as a rare socialist success. Iranians will certainly keep living their path of creating modern socialism, Inshallah.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.

I watched a documentary about water in Israel, and Israelis said that if they gave the Palestinians permission to drill into the water below their land that the Palestinians would completely dry up the water reservoirs within 20 years. Whereas Israelis, a more civilized and intelligent race, used science and figured out how to turn salt water into fresh water. So Israelis, instead of destroying the environment by idiotic drilling, figured out how to solve their water problem naturally.

It’s the same thing in North India, these dumb fucking animals just keep drilling deeper and deeper until one day, the water will simply be gone.

Brown people are too fucking stupid to understand that if they destroy the environment, they will all die.

Whites are the only race intelligent enough to be environmentally friendly. So if whites do not stop the brown races from destroying the environment, we are all going to die. It is White people’s duty to save the earth from these dumb brown savages who will literally rape and destroy the environment if they are not stopped.

First of all, the Israelis drill that groundwater a lot too. Why haven’t Jordan, Syria, and the North African states drilled out all their water?

Incidentally, I live in the Central Valley of California, which is mostly large farms owned almost exclusively by White people. Extremely conservative White people. They are doing exactly the same thing that the Israelis accuse the Pallies of doing.

They are drilling that groundwater like there’s no tomorrow. The levels keep dropping and dropping, and soon there won’t be any more to drill, and they will all be screwed. We have been yelling at the farmers about this forever now, and all they do is scream back and tell us to shut up. We are trying to regulate the groundwater with state regulations which is the only way to stop this mess because capitalists are suicidal, and farmers are all capitalists.

All capitalists will destroy everything longterm in search of that short-term buck. Right now the capitalists are blowing up the whole climate of the world, and they won’t stop because if we did stop them, they wouldn’t get as much money. So capitalism is so insane that the capitalists are deadset on blowing up the whole climate with devastating effects for and possibly ruining the whole planet because saving the planet would mean making less money.

California to this day has the least regulated water in the nation. Even rightwing states in the West have heavily regulated water laws, as it should be. Even “liberal” Governor Jerry Brown has totally caved in to Big Agriculture. Big Ag runs the state. Some water regulations are proposed, but they are very weak and not due to take place for several years. It’s madness. Meanwhile every year the idiotic farmers drill deeper and deeper. The ground is now sinking in many parts of the Valley due to excessive water withdrawal. They’re like an alcoholic on the bottle. They can’t quit and will keep pumping until the whole mess blows up. I cannot put into words how much I hate these farmers out here. They’re basically the worst humans on Earth as far as I am concerned.

Furthermore, Brown people are definitely capable of building desalinization plants. The very brown people of the Arabian Peninsula such as Saudis, Kuwaitis, Qataris, Emiratis, Bahrainis, and Omanis have all invested very heavily in desalinization plants. There are more desalinization plants in Arabia than anywhere else on Earth, especially than that (((shitty little country))). So Brown people absolutely can do this.

I assume the Pallies would like to do this, but there’s no way (((certain people))) would ever let them build a desalinization plant. In fact, in Gaza, they have a sewage treatment plant that works well, except that (((some people))) keep bombing it and blowing it, so it’s out of commission for long periods of time. Just about any major infrastructure the Pallies build is going to be bombed or blown up by Jew know who. I wonder why they build anything.

Desalinization plants are not exactly rocket science. If they were, the Arabians could never have built them.

The US, NATO and our allies always insist that any anti-Western rebel group has no agency. They’re all just puppets being pulled by the evil Putin or the ayatollahs or whatever. They have minds of their own. They lack desire, needs, wants, goals and willpower. They are all silly pawns who obey their masters in some other country who push them around like chess pieces. They have no more agency than a robot.

But the other side does it too. The Left claims that the Syrian rebels are mercenaries paid by the US. The truth is that radical Sunni Salafists have come from all over the Arab World to fight the Shia heretics ruling Syria. It’s all part of the Sunni-Shia Civil War breaking out all over the region. And 70% of the rebels are Syrian Sunni Muslims. Only 30% are from outside Syria, but those are not puppets either. They are anti-Shia fanatics who want to put in Islamic Law.

In the Ukraine, the US claims that everything was fine until the evil Russians came in and stirred things up. In other words, the Donbass rebels have no agency. They are just puppets pulled by Putin. But why would anyone agree to be a puppet for some other country. The truth is that the Donbass rebels rose up on their own due to a Nazi coup fomented by the CIA and the US State Department. Russia opposed them rising up all the way. They wanted a federalized state instead.

For a long time, Russia refused to aid them and only stepped in when they were on the verge of defeat, and the native Russians in the area were getting massacred. Polls consistently show that 94% of Donbass people do not want to be part of Ukraine. Of course, anti-US polls are always inaccurate because fear and other spooks and bogeymen. All populations polling in a direction the US doesn’t like are literally living under Josef Stalin’s rule and they are terrified to poll against whatever the government tells them to. Cuz you know they might get sent to the gulags. And get a bullet from an NKVD firing squad. Because you know anti-US populations have no agency. They all love America, and they only reason they poll that way is fear and other spooky bogeymen.

Putin doesn’t have 87% support, he has 0% support. Russians are terrified of Putin and if you answer a poll question wrong, Putin’s friend Beria will put a bullet in your head. Or you go to Siberia. Or Putin starves you to death in a new fake terror famine like the last one. Because you know Putin is the spooky USSR. He’s really Stalin. Stalin never died, you know. He just reincarnated as Putin The Evil.

You realize things were much worse under Yeltsin and 20X more journalists were killed under Yeltsin? Russia was much more authoritarian under Yeltsin than it is under Putin. But Yeltsin had 6% support. Oh well, hand wave, but Putin’s a dictator. Yeltsin? That pickled liver was Our Man in Moscow. How could he be bad. Everyone who is pro-US has a halo over their head, didn’t you know that? No really.

The Crimeans rose up on their own. The Crimeans were always a part of Russia or the USSR. There never was any country called Ukraine. It sprung up for the first time in 1991 and claimed it owned the Crimea. The Crimeans oppose being part of Ukraine from Day One and they even passed a number of resolutions saying that they were not a part of Ukraine.

Basically they never agreed to be part of Ukraine. When the US fomented a coup and the new Nazis came in and said they were joining NATO and throwing Russia out of their base in Crimea (presumably to turn it into a NATO base) Putin had to act. He had no alternative. There was no way he could lose his warm water port and allow NATO to set up a naval base right next door. Nor could he allow NATO to take Ukraine and set up an army right on his doorstep. Polls done by Western polling groups have consistently found that 87% of Crimeans support the annexation.

But see, the US and NATO claims that Crimeans and Donbass people have no agency. They have no minds of their own.

The Jews do this same garbage. Palestinians rising up on their own, maybe because Jews treat them worse than chattel. Well of course not! Zionism is wonderful! The Palestinians love it so much. They love Jews! They would never hurt one Jew, ever.

The Jews say that if it weren’t for Syria, Libya, and Iraq there would be no Palestinians. Before they said that about the USSR. The Palestinians were only rising up because the Soviets were whispering in their ear and telling them to. Hence we took down Libya, Iraq and now Syria on the orders of the Jews because in the US, we do whatever the Jews tell us to do. Iraq, Libya and now Syria were ordered to be taken down by the Israelis. First of all, they were all enemies of Israel, but second of all, if we got rid of all of those countries, the Palestinian revolution would end immediately.

Because, you know, the Palestinians are only shooting rockets and settlers because the Syrians, Iraqis, and Libyans tell them to and give them guns and stuff. This is also why Iran is on the list. Iran is the last of the Jews’ enemies to remain standing. All of the others have been taken out. Granted, Lebanon is an enemy of the Jews, but they have no military so no one cares much about them. Take out Iran and take out Israel’s last remaining enemy. And the Palestinians won’t fight anymore because they only fight because the evil Iranians tell them to. And they won’t get one more bullet because all the weaponry comes from Iran.

A similar thing is playing with Hezbollah. Does Hezbollah exist, maybe, because Israel repeatedly invaded Lebanon? Of course not! That has nothing to do with it! The Lebanese Shia love the Jews. They want to run up to Jews and kiss them on the lips! Nope, instead, Hezbollah only exists because of Iran. Every time a Jew mentions Hezbollah, they say Iran in the next sentence. Because you know Hezbollah are just puppets. Nasrallah is a man on a string.

They and he have no agency. They only take orders from Iran. They don’t. They don’t take orders from Iran. Hezbollah does whatever the Hell it wants and it is not unusual for them to have different goals and aims than the Iranians. The Iranians have no real control over them. Hezbollah is an independent entity with a strong anti-Israel position so Iran supports them, but Iran can’t tell them what to do. Hezbollah gets to do whatever the Hell it wants to. But as the interests of Iran and Hezbollah coincide it is unlikely that Hezbollah will do crazy things not approved of by Iran. On the other hand, Hezbollah is not some wing of the Iranian military taking direct orders from Iran like the Jews say.

Now if you want to say that Iran arms Hezbollah, you have a point. And part of the reason the Jews are trying to destroy Syria is because that way they can end the Iran – Syria – Hezbollah arms pipeline.

Another good case is Kashmir. If you think Indian Hindus are irrational and nuts in general, wait until you see how they feel about Kashmir. Want to see an Indian Hindu have a chimpout? Mention the word Kashmir. They will raise their voices, start yelling, pound the table and get threatening and menacing. And they will say one word over and over: “Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan!”

Because you see, Kashmiris have no agency. Kashmiris love India! They love Hindus! They want to kiss all the Hindus on the cheeks! They’re loyal Indian citizens! They have no beefs with India. Kashmiris have total love for India. They would never rebel. In fact, not one Kashmiri has ever taken up arms against India. Not one. Nope. Instead, 100% of the Kashmiri rebellion, armed and otherwise, is being caused by the evil bogeyman Pakistan.

Now Pakistan does aid some of the more radical armed Kashmiri groups, but most of the groups are actually headquartered outside of Kashmir in Pakistani Kashmir. They don’t have much of a presence in Kashmir itself. And now the resistance is mostly just constant rioting and stone throwing like in Palestine. But no matter. I’m sure every one of those stone throwers is a Pakistani in disguise. Those sneaky Pakistanis! They’re everywhere! Look out there’s one under your bed right now, Hindu! Boo! Pakistan! Boo! Boogeyman!

If you study the Kashmiri rebellion, it has internal roots. It never got going until about 1969 anyway because before that, the Kashmiris had tried to work peacefully within the system. Only when India blocked all efforts at peaceful change did the Kashmiris rise up. And in the worst of the armed conflict, 90% of the rebels were native Kashmiris.

India says, “Kashmiris are puppets cuz evil Pakistan bogeyman wants to steal our land hurr!” Actually, this is just more Indian lies. Only 6% of Kashmiris want to split off and join Pakistan. Most have traditionally only wanted an independent state in Kashmir. By the way, the UN has ordered international scofflaw India to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir to decide the fate of the region since 1949. India has always flatly refused. Because you know we can’t have people deciding their own destiny or anything like that.

Maybe Pynchon was right after all. Paranoia is the default operating mindset in our modern disinformation-polluted world.

At the age of 59, I have concluded that life or at least politics and geopolitics pretty much operates on conspiracy theory. in other words, modern life itself is in part conspiracy theory. The conspiracy theory is the truth and the lie is what everyone got told happened.

If you throw out all the “conspiracy theory” stuff, you end up with a lot of fake news. The world news people get is whatever the State Department, Pentagon and CIA want you to believe happened. Disinformation is everywhere and the Western press is more dishonest than Pravda in the USSR.

Every time you hear the phrase “conspiracy theory” or “Russian propaganda” go do some heavy research into what happened. I have done this many times in the last couple of years.

With regard to Syria and Ukraine, most of the “Russian propaganda” was simply the truth. The fake news was whatever the MSM-CIA wanted you to believe. That’s right. The MSM is the CIA. It’s all one thing. The MSM is part of the Deep State, and the CIA sits at the pinnacle.

I was appalled at the outrageous lying during the war in Ukraine. The West’s lies were continuous and appalling. Syria was even worse. I do not think I have ever seen so much lying in a war before. We are entering and new era of Der Luggenkriegs (The Lying Wars). I believe most wars that the West is reporting on where the West has an interest will be characterized by a nearly unfathomable amount of MSM lying.

Look at the “conspiracy theories” for:

The death of Arafat. Natural causes. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Actually poisoned by radiation by an Israeli spy working as his cook),

The downing of the jet at Lockerbie. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Qaddafi didn’t do it and was set up.

The attack on the aid convoy in Aleppo. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Actually a false flag attack done by a US drone and then blamed on Syria and Russia. 17 innocent aid workers were killed by the US in this false flag.

The downing of M17 in Ukraine. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Neither Russia nor the rebels did it and not only was the plane not hit by a missile but there was no missile period. The jet was downed by a Ukrainian fighter and the investigation was deliberately delayed, botched and corrupted with a fraudulent final report.

The shooting down of the Russian jet over Turkey. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Actually this was done in coordination with the US. We told Turkey 24 hours before that those jets would be in that exact location at that exact time.

US helping moderate rebels. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. In fact, US, Israeli, Saudi, Qatari and Turkish intelligence forces operate on the ground with Al Qaeda. There may have been a number of them caught in Aleppo at the end of the siege.

The chemical weapons attack by “Assad” on Damascus that killed 1,400 people. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. First the attack never even happened! There was no attack! The incident was a false flag attack done by Turkey and Al Qaeda. A small amount of sarin gas was released in the area by Al Qaeda, leading to low levels in the blood of residents. But the levels were so low as to be harmless. There were no 1,400 people. Instead about 400 people were killed, all Alawi and Christian government supporters who had been kidnapped from Northern Syria a year before. All of the dead identified so far were Alawi and Christian government supporting civilians who were kidnapped in that incident. They were killed by being put in a room with gas canisters leaking a toxin, perhaps carbon monoxide. Others were beaten to death, shot or had their throats slit. The symptoms displayed by the victims looked nothing whatsoever like Sarin poisoning. Instead they looked like carbon monoxide poisoning. A Turkish opposition parliamentarian is accusing Turkey of doing this as a false flag.

“ISIS” Suicide bombings of Kurdish Left rallies in Suruc and Istanbul. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. The government knew about both bombings and allowed the plots to go forward. Then police kept the injured from leaving the scene and beat up the survivors.

The “Gulen” coup in Turkey. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. There was no Gulen coup. Gulen had nothing to do with this. Erdogan lies like a rug! There was indeed a coup and Erdogan received warning of it some hours before but he allowed it to go forward to crack down on the opposition. The coupists were Ataturkist Turkish ultranationalist seculars. The US was also involved. The US put the coup in motion to get rid of Erdogan as he had started cooperating with Russia a week before.

Trump won the elections by winning the electoral collage, and all the polls were off. The “reported facts” were wrong, and the conspiracy theory was what really happened. Actually the polls were perfect.The polls were 100% correct. They predicted the popular vote well, and as far as certain state votes, Republicans committed mass election fraud in Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin at the very least and probably in a lot of other places. Hillary actually won Wisconsin, Florida and North Carolina by ~2-3 points, more in Pennsylvania but less in Michigan. Real recounts were never done in any of those states. 70,000 votes in Detroit alone were not counted, apparently deliberately. However, even partial recounts found 26,000 fake Trump votes in Pennsylvania, 5,000 fake Trump votes in Wisconsin and 2,000 fake Trump votes in Michigan. And all of those were acknowledged by the states. Why so many fake votes and why are they all for Trump? They have been using those damn voting machines to steal elections since 2000, and they will do it forever until we stop them. It’s pretty hard to have an accurate poll when there is mass electoral fraud going on! Polls can’t predict fraud. The exit polls were far off from the actual count. Everywhere on Earth, that means electoral fraud. P.S. Exit polls started veering far off from results in 2000, when they put those damned computers in. The charge is being made by some of the US top statisticians.